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MAC applications still being accepted

Original post made
on Sep 2, 2009

Alamo residents still have two weeks if they wish to apply to be a part of the new Municipal Advisory Council. The MAC, approved at the Aug. 11 meeting of the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, will work with the community and the Board of Supervisors to oversee Alamo.

So you tried to get the list and only got a count of MAC applications? Thank you for trying to set a tone of openness by district 3 in the MAC start-up and operations.

As I read Tomi's comments, it becomes clear that district 3 has a mistaken view that they are in-charge rather than being our employed representatives. It should go without saying, "They work for us and we do not work for them," but sometimes such reminders are necessary.

Once again, I will announce that I am a MAC applicant and I expect to interview district 3 to see if I am interested in their nomination.

The usual and customary process of enrolling individuals into positions requires a mutual interview between the organization and the applicant. The organization needs to know the precise interests of the applicant and the applicant needs sufficient feedback to determine if there is a fit for the applicant's goals and talents.

As a matter of law, from consultation with counsel, an application is only an investigation of an opportunity and does not grant either party the right to proceed with placement without mutual permission. Without such an interview step, you might not fully understand the expectation and opportunity for a MAC member. It should be policy for district 3 to validate that each applicant considered for nomination be made aware of the scope of the position's expectations and be provided rights of approval for nomination.

Posted by Mary's hometown
a resident of another community
on Sep 2, 2009 at 6:08 pm

Hey people - you don't seem to get it. The Queen has already chosen her court. This "application" process is just an slight inconvenience. No reason to actually interview the suspects if it won't have any effect on her decision.

Mr. Bailey, please know that the Queen appreciates all of your efforts but she has chosen to go a different way. That is her right because she was elected to the Supervisor job.

Humor returns in the thoughts of neighbors frustrated by the reality that district 3 believes in their leadership rather than their representative services. It changes nothing for an Alamo MAC that will be dead on arrival without outreach to the majority of residents in neighborhoods. Imagine, Mary could try to match the power, wealth, skills and savvy of >8000 voters in 94507 neighborhoods and their link to >50,000 voters in district 3.

So it comes down to a simple reality. Seven district 3 volunteer staff members, as MAC members, will be without link to the majority and a 94507 MAC is clearly dead on arrival. The remnant of that delivery will be the death of any relationship for district 3 with a majority in district 3.

"Always know what cards you are holding before you bluff a capable opponent" should ring loudly in district 3's considerations.

Today, Vince and many humorist among our Alamo alumni noted that if >17 Alamo residents, as strangers to our community of neighborhoods, applied for MAC appointment, Mary Piepho would not know them. In fact, Mary Piepho could walk through any neighborhood in 94507 and not be recognized beyond being a suspicious character to be reported to our local officers.

It is quite amazing how far Mary has gone to be unrecognizable in our region's neighborhoods. "I would not wish to recognize Mary in a line-up or present in our neighborhoods. It seems quite dangerous to me!" said Denise in a Round Hill neighborhood.

Just imagine if, in good humor, hundreds applied from our neighborhoods. Mary would be mystified by how many strangers she might interview..or not"

Mary Piepho has an opportunity to handle the MAC appointment professionally, and interview all the candidates to ensure public confidence in the process. If she does it will impress me. If she does not it will demonstrate that she doesn't care what the public thinks when it comes to making decisions that should represent out community.

I wish we could shame her into doing the right thing but Mary is impervious to the feeling of shame at this point in her career. She learned too much from her father.

I stumbled across her husband Dave's deposition on some Discovery Bay document website. Apparently he was sued for violating the Brown Act out in Discovery Bay. That city is run by a mac that is elected and the two candidates that Mary and David supported in the election last fall were beaten like rented mules. Apparently the Piepho name doesn't carry much weight in their hometown. Go figure!

There is also mention of the lawsuits Mary Piepho filed against a previous employers and a description from David Piepho about how he shreds documents and deletes emails to ensure they never come back to haunt him. Very cagey stuff. I wonder if he has Nejedly blood in him. Ha!

Some years ago, on behalf of my English silver tabby persian cat, Bentley Tailor, I use to write to Alamo Joe, Joe Combs' dog at Alamo Today. Bentley and Alamo Joe use to share some excellent humor about the politics of those days.

Now another Joe, in the humor of reality, writes once again about at-odds politics of district 3 with specific focus on the current supervisor. Certainly the methods related to how Mary Piepho will announce her choices among the already selected seventeen supporters she had listed in June/July will play out in quiet, if not silent, humor.

There is immediate humor in the district 3 announcement that they have received 15 applications for membership in the MAC when more than 20 applications have been circulated on neighborhood e-exchanges. That likely makes greater that 35 applications because Mary's supporters are strangers-by-choice to our neighborhoods.

There is more humor this morning among neighbors on the e-exchanges as we exchanged instructions in how to complete an application for "Maytag repairmen of Alamo Council (MAC), the loneliest people in town." I spent time discussing my qualifications by illustrating my success in repairing a Maytag refrigerator, washer and dryer.

Humor can be very real and quite ironic. When the savage reign of the Bush administration and Republican Congress was at its height, Mary and David made their march into Contra Costa politics. Now, with Republicans an untrusted minority, Mary and David must wait in silence for prejudice, selfishness, antagonism, and hatred to occur in an USAmerican majority so they can move their political careers forward.

Seven strangers are already chosen to be district 3 volunteer staff, as MAC members, and silence will prevail until CCC-BOS approves the seven without discussion. Then in obvious humor, the seven will hold meetings without the majority represented in their audience. They will execute agendas prepared by Mary and make decisions specified by Mary.

Today, September 8, 2009, by count, 57 applications have been submitted to the Clerk of the Board of Supervisors without any notice of receipt or review. As of the time of your article, 39 applications had been submitted and distributed to e-exchanges in the Diablo Vista (Alamo) region.

The submissions were made because their names did not appear on the list of seventeen candidates that Mary Piepho would consider in her June/July listing. Obviously, neighborhoods have discovery of that list and will compare Mary's nominations, not subject to CCC-BOS discussion later this month.

Quite invisible is the community and its willful volunteers in consideration of 94507 Alamo MAC, don't you think??

Mary will gush about how involved the community is and how she expects those that were not chosen will step up and volunteer to participate with different issues through the MAC.

She will share the names of her seven supporters who will serve, and it will then be up to the people of Alamo to invoke their voice in each and every issue over the efforts of Mary's people. Alamo can and will do this - and at the end of the day (term) Mary will be out of office in search of an appointment that won't happen. This As it should be...

Posted by Jeff Barber
a resident of another community
on Sep 9, 2009 at 12:18 pm

Facts;(from a real discovery bay resident)

-DB is not a city, if it was it wouldn't have a "CSD", but a "City concil"

-David Piepho was not sued 'personally'-the district was sued.

-The "city" is not run by a MAC…in fact it is NOT a MAC, but a special district (CSD).

-The Piepho's supported (along with a long list of others) two candidates who were targeted by the person who sued the district under false pretenses.

-Apparently The Piepho's carry enough weight to get themselves elected time after time and beat the completion like "rented mules". David Piepho has been elected 4 times running (highest vote getter) and Mary has been elected 3 times.

-That deposition is unsigned and fraudulent. If I was the Danville press I would remove that section. The document site is run by Don flint and Don Flint has an axe to grind against the Piephos. I have around 10 e-mails from Mr. Flint explaining how he wants to tarnish the Piepho's public image. Don't believe this non-sense.

Posted by Joe Blows
a resident of another community
on Sep 9, 2009 at 12:39 pm

Joe "stumbled" across a deposition? Is that like finding change in your couch?

Come on, people. As least make the lies a little more believable. This is amateur hour. The site linked is run by an individual belonging to an informal PAC that put out an agenda with a STATED goal of tarnishing the Piephos through any means possible.

Take anything and everything you read on that site with a block of salt.

Posted by From the Mouth ob Babes
a resident of San Ramon Valley High School
on Sep 9, 2009 at 12:46 pm

Dear Hal,
Didn't you listen to the speech Pres. Obama gave yesterday? Watch out for what you write on the internet- it might come back and haunt you....someone might take you for a hateful, spiteful old man!

As professionals in our copy writing, we expect impact from our carefully chosen words and their purpose. The goal of commentary drawn for news interests and neighborhoods was to provoke a breakdown of district 3's control of MAC commentary on TDW's forum. "From the mouth ob (of) Babes" could be that breakthrough and a start of disclosure from the dwindling MAC support. At some point the very minor faction in 94507 will need to present invitation to the majority to overcome the dead-on-arrival MAC soon to start operations.

In discovered e-exchanges among the MAC supporters, a growing concern for community rejection is focusing the active supporter faction on justification of the MAC as 94507's only voice. Like throwing a WAR where nobody comes, the MAC is ready to be as described, "the loneliest people in town" and a further impact on Mary's political ambitions.

AIM as implied by 'Private' was bad as they worked within the strict laws of the State of California for incorporations, disseminating the LAFCO consultant information, providing facts versus hyperbole and innuendo like egrets and parking meters and reduction of animals, etc.

AIM has not diminished the result that there were citizens who disagreed, but 'Private' seems to think SKILLS and TROUBLEMAKERS and nonGOSSIPS are one sided - sounds like unsound logic from the getgo - this person probably also relied on a city manager retiree who reviewed the state consultant figures when the retiree was so out of touch that he did not know up to date recent laws as they relate to vehicle license fees for newly incorporated cities nor structure of any but the tried and failed Vallejo type city model - thus the conclusion that a new town needed revenues equal to a city double the size of Alamo! This specious reasoning is why the Contra Costa Times, after meeting with both sides and reviewing their numbers, endorsed incorporation.

This person must not know that much of Alamo thinks the negative Neds and Nellies are in the AIA. This person is either arrogant or very naive to think they know the reasons, selfish or otherwise, of anyone.

Either way, Alamo did not want to grow up and take charge of its own taxes and destiny. It wanted, some say, to stay the way it was or it was afraid or it was the economy or (add your choise of why inc failed)....now there is change in the form of an unelected and appointed MAC. To date though Alamo already lost out - street paving indefinitely cancelled on the west side due to Public Works Budget cuts (including the worst maintained street in Alamo, Hemme, not done for 11 years), acute sheriff reductions lessening the number of officers on all shifts and without any nighttime presence whatsoever (its now out of Martinez) and no reports of crimes other than online, no valid input into fire station design or relocation other than the goodwill of the SRVFD, no valid input into keeping the ambience of the town, and tons of other decisions made daily by CCCo staff members from Flood Control to Public Works to Animals, etc.

AIM reviewed all forms of government restructuring back in 2005 to see what were the possibilities for the broken system in place and how to combat the encroachment into the look and lifestyle of Alamo. A MAC, a CSD and incorporation were the options under the laws of the State of California. A MAC being advisory, thus having no teeth exactly like all the Advisory Committees in place was viewed as essentially no change and no input and no real voice of citizens. A CSD was a bit of a step up in that it consolidated the committees, however, it required the same LAFCO approval as an incorporation and was limited to only the consolidation of the committees and their tax money. Thus incorporation was chosen as the only way for citizens to have meaningful input, to protect their community, to keep a stable revenue source, and voice over their destiny to the region, county and state.

As to Alamo stepping up - without incorporation they are cut out, whether they step up or not. And like in the recent past the county will continue to capture money from Alamo that should be directed locally. That is what happens when you have no input except an advisory MAC.

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